Maubisse, East Timor ? A fired military officer and one-time rebel whose dismissal contributed to East Timor’s descent into violence blamed the prime minister for ordering recent killings and called Thursday for him to resign.

Maj. Alfredo Reinado has emerged as a leading rival of Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri in a feud that began with accusations of discrimination by hundreds of soldiers. In March, Alkatiri fired 600 soldiers from the 1,400-member army, sparking violence that spiraled into looting, arson and street warfare between machete-armed rival gangs.

Since the unrest escalated last week, more than 100,000 people have fled their homes and 28 have died. Five others were killed in earlier clashes on April 28 that Reinado claims started as a demonstration by the dismissed soldiers but degenerated into rioting when security forces opened fire.

Reinado, 39, told The Associated Press the only way to end the wave of violence is for the prime minister to resign and be tried for allegedly ordering security forces to shoot civilians.

“Prime Minister Alkatiri has ordered the killings,” Reinado said from the Portuguese colonial-era villa that is now his base. “Alkatiri has to resign and go to court for all the crimes he ordered,” he said, gazing out through mirrored sunglasses over the hills surrounding the smoldering capital, Dili.

Australian soldiers disarm a man of a knife during a sweep of a suburb in Dili, East Timor, Thursday, June 1, 2006. At least one person was reported killed in new unrest in Dili, despite the presence of more than 2,000 foreign peacekeepers. A whole row of shops and several vehicles were set on fire in one area of the capital, and several dozen Australian troops rushed to the scene.

Reinado rejects any suggestion that he is to blame for the unrest sweeping the capital.

“Do I look like a rebel?” he asks.

In fact, Reinado once was a guerrilla, fighting occupying Indonesian forces for independence before East Timor’s bloody break from Jakarta in 1999 that created one of the world’s newest countries.

Alkatiri has rejected calls for his resignation. He maintains he was right to fire the soldiers, who went on strike claiming they were discriminated against because they came from the country’s western regions, seen as sympathetic to Indonesia.